


Circles End

by Nope



Category: Dark Tower - Stephen King
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-01
Updated: 2009-02-01
Packaged: 2018-10-31 19:28:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10905924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nope/pseuds/Nope
Summary: Another time around, and Roland meets a familiar face at a desert way-station.





	Circles End

He has been here before, but Roland does not know this yet. It's too hot. His tongue is large in his mouth. He tries to draw but the man in black has gone hazy, has gone brown and blue and hair white as the sun, and Roland feels a sudden, unspeakable thing, hope and horror so large it is a blessing, say thankya, to slide into unconscious.

#

Roland wakes with hay under his head to a dented can full of tepid water and the man's pretty lips curled in a solemn little smile.

"Would you like something to eat, sir?"

The man - the boy, he can't be much more than eighteen - has a hunger in his eyes Roland thinks he recognizes. The boy's hand is warm on his arm, calloused fingers rough against his skin. Thumb and forefinger. A gunslinger's hand.

(He thinks of Cuthbert. He thinks of Alain.)

Roland shakes his head, carefully; asks, "have we met?"

"You don't remember?" There's as much expectation as disappointment in his voice.

"No," Roland says. It feels like a lie on his tongue.

"I'll get us food," the boy says. "And more water. Sleep awhile." He smiles that small smile again. "Mayhap it'll come to you, sai."

#

Night comes. Roland lays out the bedrolls, side by side. The slug-horn of Eld is safe against his hip. The boy kills some rabbits, hands swift and sure on the guns, taking two with a single shot and two more before the rest can fully scatter. He builds a fire, skins the bucks, makes a passable stew in the dented water can.

"You've done this before," Roland says.

"Not as often as you," the boy says.

Roland watches the boy cook, marking the movement of the hands, the way the boy's eyes keep flicking back to him, for approval, or calculating, or something else he can't quite identify.

"Ka-stew," the boy says and grins when Roland grumps. "Never one for jokes, our Roland."

They eat. Roland is quiet. The boy watches him without shame. When their bowls are empty, the boy scrubs them clean with sand to save their water. Strange constellations slide slowly overhead.

"We've met," Roland says with certainty, fingers on the horn.

The boy nods.

"I don't know your name," Roland says.

"Sometimes I forget yours," the boy says. "But never your face. I always remember that."

Roland feels something turn in his belly, hot and cold.

"I came this way once," the boy says, "and didn't; and travelled after, with the man Eddie, whom I called brother; and the sister Susannah, whom we loved."

"No," says Roland, and tears, unheeded, trickle down his cheeks. "Please."

"And with Roland, my killer, my saviour, whom we called father," the boy says, "and who, at last and at always, to the Dark Tower came."

Roland names him, then; a whisper, a prayer, a benediction. "Jake."

Jake smiles, wide and true. "By the grace of the gods and the courage of my friends, say thankya."

They embrace then, as those who love and are loved do, and the boy kisses the tears from his eyes, and clings to him when Roland tries to let go, arms around his neck like hoops of steel, until there is nothing for it but to lay on the blankets together, held tight.

"You got older," Roland says, feeling the stubble on Jake's chin where it grazes his neck.

"Nineteen," Jake says, and, when Roland tenses, huffs a little. "Sometimes, it's just a number."

Jake has grown up long and gangly but there's still a touch of boy in the softness of his belly, in the smoothness of his hand, in the amazement and the joy that still lingers in his ageless blue eyes so that here, at least, Jake at eleven and Jake at nineteen perfectly overlap.

"You came." Roland's voice is full of wonder. "You really came."

"There are doors," Jake says. "If you know where to find them."

"Jake," says Roland.

"Roland," says Jake, and kisses him. The boy's lips are dry and chapped, his breath warm against Roland's skin.

When Roland does not respond, Jake pulls back, but only just a little. In the firelight, his young-old eyes are large and dark, deep as a canyon. Roland feels a trestle slip under his feet. Jake's hand is on him, touching his cheek.

"Please," Jake says. "Let me do this for you."

"For me," Roland says.

"For us," Jake corrects. "We're ka-tet, aren't we?"

"I let you drop," Roland reminds him, like he needs reminding, like that still matters. "You're just a boy."

"When I was a child, I loved you as a child loves," Jake says. "I grew up, Roland. Because of you. For you. For us, and Susannah and Eddie, and Oy, and Cuthbert and Alain and Susan, and all whose name you sang, you sing, at the heel of the Dark Tower."

("Please, not again!" he screamed. "Have pity! Have mercy!" But this too was ka, was the hands of Gan.)

Jake's hands on him drew him to the present. Roland hears the boy ask, "Do you take it back?" and shakes his head, not a yes or no, but simple confusion.

"You swore," Jake says, "on the names of all your fathers, that you would never leave me again."

"No." Roland shakes his head again. "I don't take it back."

"Even the damned love," Jake tells him, and kisses him again, slow and sweet, and Roland kisses back now, lifting a hand to cup the back of the boy - the man's - the gunslinger's head.

#

It's clumsy and awkward and glorious. He has dreamed long dreams of the Dark Tower, it thrums even now in his head, but, oh, he has dreamed of this too. Of dallying in a moment, for no more reason than because he can, because he loves and is loved in return. Their hands tremble and Jake's shirt catches on his elbows and gets all entangled; they both tug and twist and laugh, breathless, until its free and they're sprawled out again, Jake's smiling lips finding his own.

Roland strokes his hands down Jake's back, then rolls them so he's on top. Jake grins up at him, lifting a hand to run it through Roland's hair before dropping it the leather thong holding Roland's dust coloured shirt closed.

"May I?" He asks.

"Anything," Roland insists.

The beam sings in his head, but Jake's smile is even louder and a few fumbled moments later his shirt joins Jake's on the ground and Jake is wrapped around him like a monkey, bare skin against skin, breathing each other in. Jake's lips part, pouting softly, until Roland steals them for another kiss, another.

Jake arches against him, hard against his hip. Roland's hand works between them, sweeps over the curve of Jake's belly, and hesitates at the waist of his pants.

"May I?" Roland asks.

"Anything," Jake says, lips grinning, eyes serious.

Roland needs to be sure. He needs to be sure of this more than anything, more than "Anything?"

"Set your watch and warrant upon it," Jake says solemnly. Humour haunts the words though, and Roland can't help the laugh that escapes him and Jake, startled, laughs too at the sound.

He makes a little happy gasping sound when Roland strokes him through his pants, so Roland does it again, pressing with the heel of his hand, making Jake jerk and curse and grin, all at once. Sure, nimble fingers find Roland's belts, get them free. They scramble together, pushing down, kicking with their feet, until they're both suddenly naked, Jake sprawled out on top of him.

The night is cool against their skin, the sun-soaked desert still warm beneath the blankets, the two of them incandescent against each other.

"Jake," Roland says, and names him again. "John Chambers, son of Elmer."

"Toren now," Jake says. "Dean and Deschain." He grins. "Jake Tower, son of Roland. Will you kiss me now?"

Roland does, enticing Jake's tongue with his own, stroking his hands down Jake's back to squeeze his ass. Jake shifts a little and the both gasp as they slide together, cock against cock, length against length. There are ghosts here, shades of Alain and Cuthbert in the first flushes of youth, but they're smiling, and then they're gone as Jake's teeth nip at his neck.

"Stay with me now," Jake murmurs in his ear.

High above, herring bone clouds break about the Beam, pointing the way to the Dark Tower, but Roland has eyes now only for Jake, for the two of them, pressed so close and wanting. They rock together, slow and easy, hands roaming skin.

"More," Jake insists.

"More?" Roland asks.

"I have--" Jake moves off him a little, fumbling in the dark. Roland watches the horn roll in the firelight, bright glinting. Then Jake is back, clutching a pot in his hand.

"Grease," he says, shy and challenging, all at once. "Goose grease. For, you know--"

"I know," Roland agrees.

"I want to," Jake says, fierce all of a sudden. He tenses when Roland pulls him down, then relaxes completely, boy-blanket. He whispers it again against Roland's skin. "I want to."

"Anything," Roland reminds him.

"Yeah," Jake breathes.

His hands leave Roland for a moment, come back slick. Roland bites back a groan as they wrap around his cock, twisting in rising circles. He catches Jake's look, amused and aroused, and lets the next groan out and the next, admiring the way the boy's eyes darken, the way his skin flushes, his cheeks, his chest.

Nineteen, Roland thinks. Nineteen and--

"Nineteen and change," Jake says.

Without letting go of Roland's cock, he straddles Roland's hips, holding Roland up, positioning himself -- slides up and down for a moment before getting centred and Jake lets out a little nervous giggle. Roland rests a hand on the boy's hip, rubbing his thumb in slow circles.

Jake pushes back. Straight and true, look a good gunslinger does. They both moan as the entrance is breached. Jake's hot and tight and squeezing around him, sliding so slowly down. The boy winces a little and gasps. Roland holds him steady.

"Stop--" His voice comes out raspy. He swallows, licks his lips. "You can stop if--"

"Are you kidding me?" Jake huffs out. There's pain, a little, in his voice, and pleasure, and laughter too. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I don't kid," Roland says, almost smiling, and Eddie says 'Roland cracked a good one' in his head.

"I want to," Jake says, almost snotty, and he pushes down again, inch by slow inch.

Nineteen and change, Roland thinks. His hand tightens on Jake's hip and Jake pushes, and suddenly there's no space between them. They're flush. Joined. He has become the boy; the boy has become him.

"Roland," Jake says, a tight, almost keening sound.

Jake's cock is dark and trembling. Roland's hand dips through the grease then forward to find it, stroking Jake slow and sure. The tightness around his cock grows suffocating, relaxes, tightens once more.

"You're so," Jake tries, and loses the words. Sweat darkens Jake's hair from sun bleached to corn-flower, sticks it to his forehead. Roland rests his hand without letting go, just holding Jake, feeling Jake's pulse beat. Feeling his own.

There are drums in his head, heart drums, war drums, journey drums. A thousand beating footsteps, a million, crossing deserts and mountains and roads and rails and plains, sand and rock and gravel and roses, all the way to the black up-jutting of the Dark Tower. It stands. It darkles and it tincts, it stands, and it's true, and it goes on.

"But there are more important things," Jake says, calm and serious, all around him, looking down at him, eyes full of stars. "Aren't there?"

"Yes," Roland says and, surprised, tastes truth on his tongue.

Jake grins happily. "Say it again?"

"Yes." Roland does.

Jake rises off him, almost to the point of parting, and then slides back down.

"Say it," he crows. "Say it, Roland!"

"Yes," Roland says, gasps, moans, and Jake rises and falls, rises and falls, riding him now hard and fast, now slow and sure.

"Yes," Roland cries, and Jake too, his hands on Roland and Roland's on his. moving together and apart and together. "Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!"

Because there is Jake, Jake who is crying out, who is coming, shooting high into the night and all over Roland's pumping hand, there is Jake who does not slow, though he clenches and convulses around Roland, there is Jake, and Eddie, and Susannah, and Susan, there is Jake, and there is Roland, slamming home and crying and coming, and coming, filling the moaning, panting boy, seeded and loved and named, "Jake!"

"Roland," Jake answers, voice full of glory, full of wonder.

When he falls, Roland catches him.

#

The night is long, and Jake has youth on his side, and Roland has stamina, and they go again and again, until each has the other memorized, the shape of them, the feel, the scents and tastes and when, sometime in the early hours, Jake says, "the tower," Roland says, "to blazes with it" and nips at Jake's lip when the boy laughs and they tumble together again, wrapped in blankets and Arthur Eld's slug-horn gleams in the last of the starlight and when Roland wakes, sticky and pleasantly sore, to the dawn's half-light, the bed beside him is as empty as the sky.

There is nothing at his side, though the boy has not taken his guns. Held down by bullets, a note reads in a spidery hand, "Go then. There are other worlds than these." It's signed with love, not Jake, but simply ka.

In the far, far distance, he hears the winding horn.

#

The man in black flees across the desert. No one follows.


End file.
